High interest rates, the dual strikes and the new ULA mansion tax have created a downturn in transactions in Los Angeles even amid strong prices and a recent record-breaker for the most expensive house ever sold in California.

Despite the challenges, L.A.’s agents (chosen based on total sales volume, Hollywood clients and media visibility) continued to smash records, led by the most expensive sale in California history — Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s $200 million purchase of an estate in Malibu in which Westside Estate Agency’s Kurt Rappaport repped both sides of the deal.

Kurt Rappaport

It’s been nearly a quarter-century since Kurt Rappaport co-founded the Westside Estate Agency, and he’s doing his biggest deals now — to wit, repping both sides of the biggest sale ever in California: Jay-Z and Beyoncé’s $200 million purchase of the Tadao Ando-designed Malibu compound owned by the soap opera dynasts Bill and Maria Bell. Rappaport is also the backer of Hollywood’s hottest restaurant to open this year: chef Evan Funke’s eponymous Funke. Among other big deals, Rappaport also co-listed Mark Wahlberg’s mansion sale, handled both sides of Ryan Seacrest’s recent $51 million sale, and repped producer Henry Winterstern in selling his spec mansion for $48 million, a million above asking. Along with Sotheby’s International Realty’s Lisa Laughlin, Rappaport also repped the seller of he Malibu property bought by producer Edward Hamm Jr. for $91 million, the third biggest sale in L.A. in the last year.

Drew Meyers

Onetime WME intern Drew Meyers has emerged as a top broker at the Westside Estate Agency, where he became a partner this year. He repped both sides (along with agency founder Kurt Rappaport) of the sale of the former Broad Art Foundation building in Santa Monica to Scooter Braun for $25.9 million, and represented the buyer of the former Mary Tyler Moore house in Bel Air for $14.6 million. The latter, he notes, is situated “directly on the golf course of Bel-Air Country Club — you can always replicate a home, but you can’t replicate land. Owning on one of the top-five most exclusive golf courses in Los Angeles is like owning gold, and it will only go up in value over the years.”

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